Newsletter

Re-striping to 'narrow' Bluffton Road

Here’s a switch from the usual road widening around Bluffton. The town is proceeding to reduce a mile-long stretch of Bluffton Road (SC 46) from four traffic lanes to two through re-striping.

The nighttime, week-long project will change the road from Thurmond Way, the road to the Post Office in Bluffton Village, south to the four-way stop downtown.

With the re-striping, the road’s outer sides will be remarked to become 8-foot wide parallel parking spaces and 6-foot wide bicycle lanes. Traffic lanes will each be about 11 feet wide, a little less than now, according to engineer Karen Jarrett, town transportation project manager.

The transition between four lanes and two lanes will be south of the Thurmond Way intersection, according to a diagram.

Thompson Pavement Marking of Port Wentworth, Ga., was scheduled to start Monday night, but rain and cold got in the way.

Work was expected to begin this week, when the weather improved, Jarrett said Monday.

They’re calling the Old Town project a “road diet.” It follows the Old Town Master Plan, adopted in 2006 by the Town Council, “which indicates the road should be two lanes with parking to provide a more pedestrian friendly environment,” she said.

The work on the state highway was authorized by the S.C. Department of Transportation.

The contractor will be paid based on unit prices, and the estimated cost is $33,943, Jarrett said.

Marking will be done between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m.

“The contractor will provide approved traffic control during the striping. The road should not be closed, but there will be intermittent lane closures, which is why the work had to be performed at night,” she said.

A state and county project that widened Bluffton Road from two-lanes to four-lanes from Thurmond Way north to U.S. 278 was completed early this past summer.

“Four lanes are really needed between U.S. 278 and Bluffton Parkway,” but not south of Thurmond Way, Jarrett said in July.

Along with “diet,” an engineering term, town officials are calling the Bluffton Road plans “street quieting.”

“It’s really designed to slow cars down and provide a more pedestrian-friendly environment,” Jarrett said in July.

Counting design, about $50,000 was budgeted for the project.

A study by consultant Kimley Horne in 2010 “determined there was adequate capacity for a two-lane roadway,” a town engineering report states.

The same engineering group’s Beaufort office did the proposed restriping design that was sent to the DOT for approval.

In particular, the new parallel parking spaces will serve motorists stopping at the Calhoun Street Promenade and the Magnolia Village Business Park on opposite sides of Bluffton Road.

Both developments were designed so that on-street parking would provide some of their parking spots, according to Jarrett.